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Re: Japan nuclear crisis: 50 brave men the last hope in crisis

Latest news reports have about 180 persons working in shifts of 50.

Another anecdote, from the BBC:

1351: Andrew Dickinson, in Hiroshima, writes: "Today a shopkeeper who overcharged me for some fruit cycled to the bus station on the off chance of finding me to pay me back. Japanese spirit and kindness remains strong."

Re: Japan nuclear crisis: 50 brave men the last hope in crisis

I have a friend who did japanese studies in college and went over to teach english there for some years who first pointed these guys out to me. He believes in time these individuals are going to be immortalized within the common consiousness of Japan much like the 47 Ronin. He said it was a perfect example of Yamato-damashii, essentially the Japanese Spirit.

Re: Japan nuclear crisis: 50 brave men the last hope in crisis

Originally Posted by Zyphlin

I have a friend who did japanese studies in college and went over to teach english there for some years who first pointed these guys out to me. He believes in time these individuals are going to be immortalized within the common consiousness of Japan much like the 47 Ronin. He said it was a perfect example of Yamato-damashii, essentially the Japanese Spirit.

There is no doubting the bravery or the sacrifice of these men.

They will most likely die a long and painful death too. Yet they are standing strong. I guess its almost like kamakazi pilots. These are kamakazi nuke plant workers.

Re: Japan nuclear crisis: 50 brave men the last hope in crisis

Something to give you an idea of what these people are risking:

Later, six fire engines and a water cannon tried to spray the building with 9,000 gallons of water from high pressure hoses. However, radiation levels within the plant rose from 3,700 millisieverts to 4,000 millisieverts an hour immediately afterwards.

This the reason these workers are pouring water on the reactor from helicopter and firehose hundreds of feet away from the buildings and even then workers have to be pulled back after an hour of exposure. Some reports say that for these reactors to get power restored would require workers going to the control room. At 4 sieverts an hour it would pretty much be guaranteed that the people who go in there will get radiation sickness. Just two hours in that plant would amount to a fatal dose by itself even with medical treatment not even considering the radiation any of these workers have been exposed to since this began. In other words getting power restored to these cooling systems could very well be a suicide mission for whoever goes in there. Tragically reports suggest that not only could this effort fail to activate the cooling systems due to all the damage, but that it could even cause some sort of explosion in the reactors.

"For what is Evil but Good-tortured by its own hunger and thirst?"- Khalil Gibran

Re: Japan nuclear crisis: 50 brave men the last hope in crisis

This the reason these workers are pouring water on the reactor from helicopter and firehose hundreds of feet away from the buildings and even then workers have to be pulled back after an hour of exposure. Some reports say that for these reactors to get power restored would require workers going to the control room. At 4 sieverts an hour it would pretty much be guaranteed that the people who go in there will get radiation sickness. Just two hours in that plant would amount to a fatal dose by itself even with medical treatment not even considering the radiation any of these workers have been exposed to since this began. In other words getting power restored to these cooling systems could very well be a suicide mission for whoever goes in there. Tragically reports suggest that not only could this effort fail to activate the cooling systems due to all the damage, but that it could even cause some sort of explosion in the reactors.

For all you old school guys like me, who are familiar with Rads, there are 100 Seiverts to a Rad (1 Sievert = 10 Millirads). So 4 Sieverts per hour is only 40 Millirads of radiation per hour. The problem here is that it is cumulative, so long exposures can be quite dangerous. But if your exposure was for a few seconds only, you are taking about Microrads now, which isn't that bad. You get more than that with a chest x-ray.

Re: Japan nuclear crisis: 50 brave men the last hope in crisis

Raising the limit again

The owner of the stricken nuclear power complex in northeastern Japan said Saturday that it will hike the radiation exposure limit for its workers at the plant from 100 millisieverts per shift to 150 millisieverts, Japan's public broadcaster NHK reported.

Tokyo Electric Power Company said some workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant have already been exposed to more than 100 millisieverts and that the company, citing the unprecedented nature of the crisis, has raised the limit to 150 millisieverts for some outdoor workers.

"This is a considerable amount of radiation," said G. Donald Frey, a medical physicist and professor of radiology at the Medical University of South Carolina. "The limit for radiation workers in the United States is 50 millisieverts per year, but we try to keep them to less than 5 millisieverts per year."

Re: Japan nuclear crisis: 50 brave men the last hope in crisis

NKH said that two of these workers are already hospitalized with radiation sickness.

With strong radiation exposure, highly energetic gamma particles strike electrons and knock them out of their orbiting shell. In a living organism, this circumstance causes rapid and cascading biological mutations. With a fatal level of radiation exposure, flesh will blacken and swell tremendously which in turn leads to major cracks and fissures. The skin then sloughs off. It is a horrible way to die. Death typically occurs anywhere between 3-14 days.